A list-making dad's dream come true

I didn't start making my list of all the movies I've ever seen -- which is just five away from reaching 5,300 -- until I was about to graduate high school.

I got my hands on a video guide released by the local video chain, which seemed exhaustive at the time, and which helped me build the bones of my list. Today, I feel the list is probably accurate to within ten titles, and those that aren't on there are likely ones I saw so young that I don't remember their titles, or even seeing them.

I've considered, over the years, that the only way to get a truly accurate list would have been to start when I was a kid, something that was never likely to happen. Neither of my parents are into lists or movies, particularly -- actually, my mom has gotten into movies in a big way, but it's been more of a later life obsession. In any case, they wouldn't have made up a list of movies their child had seen because that just wasn't something someone was likely to do in the late 1970s or early 1980s, at least not without their child asking them to do so. (Not that it's particularly common in the 2010s.) And at that point I didn't yet know I was going to be this obsessed with lists.

But now that I'm a parent with my own child ...

I'm not going to lie, I have thought about this a number of times. I figured the 45-year-old version of my older son -- either son, but he was the one I thought of first -- would thank me for it. He wasn't going to have the tools nor the wherewithal to create this list, but I could. After all, I'd know about most of the movies he saw because I'd see them with him, and been keeping track of them for my own purposes.

Every time I considered it, though, I ultimately waved it off. There are many things you may want your children to inherit from you, but obsessive list-keeping skills is not necessarily one of them. I don't think it's a bad thing to pass on, per se, but I'd feel weird being proactive about it. It's something they have to come by on their own, or not at all.

And sometimes, they do just that.

A propos of nothing except the fact that he's got my genes, my son has started asking me recently about my favorite movies. He knows I'm a critic, and he also knows I have my films ranked on Flickchart. This has all become more relevant for him in the wake of seeing Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which he considers his favorite movie of all the time. More often than I would think reasonable, he asks me where this movie ranks on my list, expecting me to say it's in my top ten or something. When I'm honest and say that it's probably in my top 400 (out of that aforementioned 5,300) he's always disappointed.

It had never been more than your typical kid-questioning until this past weekend, when he said he wanted to rank his top 100 movies. And I said I had the means at my disposal to help him compile a list of all the movies he'd ever seen.

He not only jumped on board, he wanted to do it right then.

Instead we did it over the next few days, adding films as we came across them by going in reverse chronological order through my list of first-time watches and repeat viewings on Letterboxd. We added some films I knew he'd watched without me, such as in his after-school program or at his aunt's house. And though this doesn't really feel definitive either, and we expect to add movies over time as we remember them, we currently have a list of 106 films he's seen.

It's funny how at age eight, he's already grappling with some of the same things I am grappling with in my series Audient Audit -- movies I think I've seen, but can't be sure. I told him he'd watched Bambi and Dumbo, neither of which he actually remembered seeing, and likely would never have included himself on a future such list. Then there were two movies he started but didn't finish at his aunt's house -- that's a pretty common thing there, apparently, since normal people don't lose sleep over partial watches. He wasn't willing to include them. That's a standard I apply to my own lists as well.

Ranking them? Next weekend, probably, if he hasn't already moved on to something else, which is a distinct possibility.

But now that I have this list, I may try to maintain it for him. We watched E.T. on Easter night, after compiling the list, and I've added that. With the one other I just remembered, now it's 108.

A long way from 5,300, but you have to start somewhere.